Iran was behind a recently foiled plot to target embassies of the United Arab Emirates in Ethiopia and Sudan via sleeper cells, the New York Times reported on Monday.
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The paper quoted Israeli and Western intelligence sources, who said the plot was thwarted by the intelligence agencies of Ethiopia and Sweden. At least three Iranian nationals were among the 15 suspects already arrested by Ethiopian and Sudanese security services.
According to a report from early February, an Iranian terror attack targeting an Israeli embassy in one of Africa's eastern countries was thwarted in January. Citing Western intelligence sources, the report said Tehran sent agents to the then-unnamed country for the purpose of gathering information about the Israeli, American, and Emirati embassies in order to carry out an attack against one of them. Several agents were of European nationality, besides their Iranian citizenship, the report noted.
The New York Times report from Monday said Iran wants to harm the UAE after placing it "atop its list on enemies," both due to its rapprochement with Israel and its efforts to hinder Tehran's nuclear program.
According to the report, Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, was chosen as a target because of the government's preoccupation with internal crises, such as the ongoing fighting in the Tigray region, and because it is relatively easy to run agents in the country. It's safe to assume that targeting the UAE's embassy in Sudan was at least partly meant as a message to the Sudanese government to eschew normalization with Israel.
"Africa is a relatively easy place to operate, and Ethiopia is preoccupied with other issues," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer now with the Brookings Institution, told the New York Times.
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